


where there is ruin (there is hope for a treasure)

by warandrunning



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: (I'm so sorry), (for chapter 4), Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Gore, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, Spoilers, also, just... slow in general
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 17:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8294257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warandrunning/pseuds/warandrunning
Summary: Post-The Nuclear Option. June quits the Railroad and just about everything else after the Institute goes down, but a group of survivors is hunting her and Shaun. So she rejoins the Railroad to get them off her back for good.M for language, mostly, but also violence. (Because the Wasteland just isn't as fun if you don't get to bash heads in with a nail-studded baseball bat.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure." - Rumi
> 
> Okay so this is the first fic I've both a) liked enough and b) finished enough to actually post anywhere, and now I'm holding myself accountable via the Internet at large to actually finish the whole thing. Wish me luck?

It’s quiet, so, so quiet: All she can hear is her son’s laughter, Codsworth’s gentle whirring, and the crash of waves on the sand. It’s a far cry from the chaos and noise she left; even in its calmest moments, Railroad’s HQ was a bustle of purposeful activity. But this, this undisturbed lighthouse on the coast where she takes Shaun, is simple, uncomplicated. Sunlight reflects off the water, the lighthouse lamp turns endlessly to warn ships that never come, and the generator rumbles peacefully in time with the crashing waves.

They skip rocks on the waves and make castles out of sand and watch the sunset from the top of the lighthouse tower every night. They build a greenhouse and fish from the edge of the dock and patch up the leaky roof before the winter snows set in. They tinker with gadgets and play computer games and listen to Travis “Lonely” Miles croon on the radio. It’s good, she thinks, better than she’s had it in a long, long time. It’s peace, finally, she thinks, this easy life with her boy and her robot and her dog.

But then Deacon shows up on her doorstep late one night, bruised and battered and shivering. He’s changed his face, but she’d know that voice anywhere when he tries to chuckle and says, “Well hello-o, beautiful. Fancy meeting you here.” And the bloody slash of his smile reminds June of something Nate told her once, two centuries and countless deaths ago:

War never changes.

 

chapter 1

—

 

“We gotta get you out of here,” Deacon groans, sagging against the doorframe. “It’s not—we can’t—they found you.”

“Deacon, what the hell?” June catches him when he stumbles and falls, then walk-drags him to sprawl on her couch. She stokes the embers in the fireplace, tossing on an extra log to ward off the winter chill Deacon brought in. “You can’t just show up after—after four months… Deacon, I quit! I left. What are you doing here?”

Codsworth whistles over from his station in the kitchen. “Mum! What’s all the ruckus? Who’s this, then? Did I hear you call this strange man Deacon?”

“Don’t worry about it, Codsworth. Go keep Shaun and Dogmeat upstairs, will you?” She rummages in a desk for a stimpak, and Deacon’s groan of relief when she jams it into his leg has her sighing in response. Head turned away, he waves his hand vaguely in her direction, and she catches it in hers, bringing his split knuckles to her lips in a gesture that’s more muscle-memory than conscious decision. “Deacon, what are you doing here?” she asks again, a whisper this time.

“You gotta run, Fixer.” He sits up. “We gotta—”

“Mama?” June and Deacon look up to the staircase and the voice’s source. “Who’s that?”

June gives Shaun her best approximation of a reassuring smile. “Hi, bug. Sorry we woke you. Didn’t Codsworth tell you to stay upstairs?”

Shaun rolls his eyes. “Please, Mama. Codsworth can’t boss me around.”

“Maybe so,” June says with a wry smile, real this time, “but I sure can. Go on upstairs. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Fine.” He shrugs and pads silently back up the steps.

“Wonder where he got that from…” Deacon muses. “It certainly wasn’t from you.”

June punches his shoulder. “I’m so glad you could interrupt your mad babbling to make a potshot about my stealth skills.” She pulls the sunglasses off his face and stares hard at him. “Enough distractions—Deacon. For the love of God. What’s going on?”

“A group of survivors from the Institute has organized and is hunting you,” he says as he sits up, all business-as-usual, like he hadn’t been bleeding out on her couch moments ago. June wonders at the magic of a well-used stimpak and the resilience of men (specifically this one). “We kept them off your tail for a while, but they found this place, and they’re coming for you. I don’t know how long we have, but we have to get you and Shaun out of here.”

“Christ.” June knows, deep down, that she’s been living on borrowed time. That knowledge doesn’t soothe the ache in her chest for her innocent boy and their quiet season together. She goes to the trunk in the corner of the room, filled with her old combat gear. “Stay here,” she commands. “I’ll get my son.”

Deacon opens his mouth to speak, but June is already dashing up the stairs, pulling on sundry bits of armor nearly gone to rust with disuse. Shaun meets her at the top of the landing, trailed by a growling Dogmeat.

“What’s happening? Who’s that on the couch?”

“I’ll explain later, love.” June pulls an olive-green duffel bag from under the bed and pulls out a small vest. “Put this on, okay?”

Shaun pulls the material over his head. “Why is it so heavy?”

A flash of light outside and the unmistakable thunder-zap of an Institute teleporter sends June diving for cover, Shaun in her arms. She thrusts him and the duffel back under the bed. “You stay here, okay? Don’t move. Get the pipe pistol in the bag; that’s for you.”

“Mama—”

“Shaun, it’ll be okay. I love you. Just stay here.” She looks at Dogmeat and snaps toward the bed. He joins Shaun there, curling protectively around the boy.

June loads a clip into her Deliverer and peers out the west window. She counts one—no, two Coursers by the reflection of their glasses, and the glowing eyes of at least three Gen 2 synths. She curses her foolhardiness—her little homestead is nearly indefensible; too many windows, too many doors, not enough walls or sandbags or turrets. The solitary one she’s set up on the balcony whirs to life, spitting its rope of bullets at the synths, but a Courser takes it down with two quick shots from his laser pistol, and it goes quiet.

Movement by the staircase draws June’s eye, and she looks to see Deacon signing, _How many?_

She raises five fingers in response. He nods, then puts his fingers to his eyes like he’s putting on sunglasses. June grimaces and points to the floor—she left them downstairs. Deacon staggers, hand fluttering to his heart, and June represses a giggle. But they sober immediately when a door downstairs creaks open, followed by a deafening explosion that rocks the house. The upstairs windows shatter, and the floorboards creak dangerously.

The glare June aims at Deacon is deadly. “You _mined_ my house? I left you alone for two minutes! Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

“I didn’t think they’d be stupid enough to set one off!” He crouches and peers down the stairs through the smoke, and June follows him.

“Shaun, you stay right there,” she commands, raising her gun as she thunders down the staircase. Deacon’s already firing, taking out two legless Gen 2s crawling from the wreckage. June catches the distortion of a Stealth Boy through the smoke and levels her gun, squeezing off three quick shots. It doesn’t take the Courser down, but her third shot hits the Stealth Boy, which sputters and dies.

Deacon whoops and seizes the opportunity to nail the synth between the eyes as June rushes past him, tucking Deliverer into her belt to twirl a nail-studded baseball bat in her hands.

“Deacon, you stay here with everyone. I’ll find the last two.”

“Aw, you get to have all the fun,” he whines. “With your fancy swatter and your bossy mom ’tude.”

June blows him a kiss before stepping over the ruined threshold of her home. “I’ll be home for dinner, darling. Keep a plate warm for me.”

She runs into the third Gen 2 almost immediately, batting its head off with one clean swing. The final Courser is less forthcoming.

“Come on out, you animatronic asshole,” June calls. She steps farther out from under the crumbling porch awning, squinting into the dark. The soft hum of a laser pistol sounds by her ear, and June curses under her breath.

“I’m right here. Drop your weapon and place your hands behind your head.” The swatter clatters to the ground as June lifts her hands to her head. “You will answer for your crimes against the Institute, June Medina.”

“It’s Miller-Medina, actually.” She’s a lawyer, after all; she’s nothing if not a pedant. “I hyphenated my name when I married Nate.”

The Courser purses her lips. “Noted. June Miller-Medina, you are under arrest. Will you submit to the authority of the Institute?”

In her peripheral, June spots the blur of Deacon’s shadow in the second-story window. She signs _Wait_ , hoping he can see her hands. “You mean you’re not just going to shoot me?”

“No. My orders are to take you into custody. You are to stand trial.”

June turns her head to side-eye the Courser. “What crimes am I being charged with?”

She launches into what sounds like pure recitation of the Institute’s bylaws; in the jumble of legal nonsense, June picks out her charges: espionage, treason, murder, kidnapping. Nothing unexpected. She flicks her fingers, and Deacon’s shot rings out, cutting the Courser off mid-sentence. In one smooth movement, June stoops to pick up her swatter, then turns to slam it into the Courser’s head (for good measure; they’re resilient fuckers). She salutes to Deacon in the window, then picks her way back upstairs, shifting uncomfortably in her already-chafing chest piece. (It’s not that she’s let herself go, exactly—a nearly impossible feat in the Wasteland—it’s just that she’s gotten used to not constantly running for her life. It’s just the usual winter bulk, she reasons.)

“Everyone okay up here?” June kneels to Shaun under the bed. He peers back at her, all wide, worried eyes.

“Can I come out now?”

June reaches her hand out, and he takes it, scrambling right into her arms. He hugs her neck tight, and she buries her face in his hair. Dogmeat whines softly, whuffling his wet nose in June’s ear.

“June,” Deacon says behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You know what comes next.”

She sighs. “Yeah, I know. Will you go get everything ready? I’ll be down in a sec.” Then she stands, picking Shaun up with her and holding him tight. “Codsworth? I need you to record a message for me and take it to Nick in Diamond City.”

The robot glides forward. “Yes, mum. Ready when you are.”

She keeps her message brief: The Institute attacked her, she’s safe but in hiding with Shaun and Deacon, let Nick know they’re okay, please keep an eye on Codsworth and Dogmeat until she can get back. Then she kisses the top of Dogmeat’s furry head, gives him a missive to protect Codsworth, and sends the odd pair off.

Shaun in one arm and their duffel in the other, June joins Deacon downstairs. His sunglasses are back over his eyes, and there’s a lit cigarette between his teeth. He’s already brought the other two bodies inside, all stacked in a funeral pyre in the middle of the living room, and he’s dousing everything with kerosene: pyre, couch, bookshelf, floor, walls.

He takes one look at her, weighted down with kid and gear, and gestures for the duffel. “Lighten up, doll.”

June tosses him the bag with a dead-eyed look, then strides to the ancient computer in the bay window. She pulls the hard drive out, stuffs it in a pocket, and does a slow 360-turn to look around her home. Then she looks at Deacon.

 _Ready?_ he signs, and she nods. “Then let’s rock ‘n’ roll.” He follows June and Shaun outside, shaking the last of the kerosene down the porch to puddle in the dirt. The detached part of June’s mind is glad she spent all that time shoveling snow out of her yard.

The trio cuts a lonely silhouette between the moonlight-drenched hills of Wasteland snow behind and the near-wreck of the lighthouse home June built with her son before. With a sigh, June plucks the smoldering cigarette from Deacon’s mouth, takes a long, deep drag, and flicks it into the line of gas. They watch the flames lick up to her home, then engulf it.

It’s an old Railroad tradition: When a hideout gets burned figuratively, it also gets burned literally.  


—  
 

“Are you sure you’re okay carrying him?” Shaun’s arms are draped around Deacon’s shoulders, legs wrapped around his waist, as they walk down the ruined road. Shaun sighs in his sleep, and his head lolls on Deacon’s shoulder. 

“Quit fussing, we’re both fine,” Deacon replies easily, but June doesn’t miss how he favors his left knee and keeps Shaun carefully tucked on his right side as the stimpak wears off.

“Deacon…” It’s hard to meet his eyes as they walk side-by-side, especially with Shaun’s head blocking the way, so she stares straight ahead, boots crunching in the snow. “Thank you.”

“Aw, don’t mention it.” Deacon’s voice is still deceptively light. “Friendly neighborhood pack brahmin, at your service.”

“I meant for earlier.”

“Oh, that.” He shifts Shaun in his arms to wave a dismissive hand. “All in a day’s work. The Railroad takes care of its people, you know that.”

“But I’m not Railroad anymore,” she says quietly, as if the memory of June striking through her alias on the chalkboard at HQ isn’t permanently etched into both their minds.

Deacon shifts Shaun again so his head rests on the other shoulder, clearing his line of sight to glance at June. “You’re always going to be Railroad, far as I’m concerned. We owe you that much.”

June looks at him then, moonlight reflecting off the curve of his glasses. (It always amused her how they both wore glasses, but hers were so she could see people while his were so people couldn’t see him. “The eyes don’t lie,” he’d tell her with a chuckle. “Gotta keep these baby blues under wraps.”) They’re not walking anymore, she notices distantly, and Deacon’s turned to face her. She takes his glasses, wondering if his eyes are still the same deep blue as before.

They’re not. Instead, they’re a nondescript shade of brown too dark to describe in the weak moonlight. She should have expected that, but a part of her is disappointed nonetheless.

“You keep doing that,” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling with his smirk. “You think you’re gonna find something special?”

“The eyes don’t lie,” she counters, lips twisting in a crooked answer. Their bodies are bare inches apart, June’s chest grazing Shaun’s back between them.

“What are mine saying?” He looks intently down at her, eyes dark.

June searches his face, looking for a spark of something she’ll recognize. Deacon’s old face is gone, the ginger stubble and dimpled chin and deep-set eyes replaced with new features, but there’s something in the shape of his smirk, the quirk of his eyebrows, the dance in his eyes, that sends her gut into a tailspin. Being with him always was like flirting with that invisible line between flying and falling, danger and adrenaline and the thrill of the chase, and that’s always been half the fun.

There’s something else in his face, too, in the crow’s feet framing his eyes and the hard lines of his mouth he didn’t bother smoothing with surgery. June’s sure he doesn’t mean to show this old, hidden hurt, but she didn’t get where she is by falling for Deacon’s little frauds, that’s for damn certain—except… well. It’s not an old hurt, now, so much as a new one.

“Dea—”

Shaun stirs, limbs flailing as he wakes, and the pair breaks apart—June dodging a wild elbow, Deacon earning a headbutt under his jaw. The boy blinks sleepily at June, oblivious. “Are we almost there?”

June brushes the matted hair off her son’s forehead with a chuckle. “Not quite, bug. We’ve still got a few hours to go.”

Shaun yawns mightily, then nestles back into the crook of Deacon’s neck. “Coolio, Mama.

“Yeah, you only say that ‘cause you don’t have to walk, you big lug,” June teases. She slides Deacon’s glasses back over his eyes and saunters off, carefully not looking at him. “Move it or lose it, boys. We’ve got places to be!”


	2. Chapter 2

Desdemona’s relocated the Railroad’s HQ since the Brotherhood attack; the main base of operations is in a military bunker north of the airport now. Getting there is trudging through miles of half-collapsed subway tunnels, Shaun slung across June’s back and Deacon pretending not to limp behind them. June’s stockpile of stimpaks is in the smoking ruins of her home, and Carrington needs to get a look at what she thinks must be at least two bruised ribs and a sprained knee.

She doesn’t recognize either of the agents “casually” guarding the bunker’s hidden entrance, a hatch in a narrow service tunnel. They give Deacon stiff salutes when they see him, and June chokes back a guffaw.

“You didn’t actually convince those poor saps you’re President Eden, did you?” she asks once they’re through the hatch and out of hearing. She sets Shaun down to walk the rest of the way himself, but keeps a tight hold on his hand (he doesn’t argue).

“Nah,” Deacon chuckles, “that was the last batch of greens. These ones think I’m ex-Gunner. A real hardass. They call me ‘sir’ and everything.”

If June didn’t know better, this version of Deacon looks like he could be, with his heavy brows, square chin, and close, high crop of dark hair. She tells him as much, and the sideways grin he gives in answer is 100 percent unadulterated Deacon.

“Not a fan of the new me, huh?” he says, rubbing his sharp jaw. “Can’t say I blame you. Ol’ Sarge is a little rough around the edges.”

She rolls her eyes and preps her quippy response just as they get to the bunker’s command center. They’d only passed one other person in the long, dark hallway on the way in—another agent June didn’t recognize, and who was too busy to stop and chat—but the large, circular room is a hive of activity: runners, well, run to and fro; Tinker Tom, generally ignored, frantically stamps out what looks like an electrical fire in the corner where he’s set up shop; Carrington stitches up a gash in a howling woman’s leg; and in the middle of it all, Desdemona, smoking cigarette clenched between her teeth, is hunched over a hefty table littered with papers. It’s a scene not unlike the old HQ, just bigger, louder, busier; and an unexpected wave of homesickness hits June.

Deacon notices. “You good?” he asks, loud enough for only her.

June nods, but doesn’t respond—she’s distracted by Shaun tugging insistently at her arm.

“What is this place, Mama?” he asks when she looks down at him.

She kneels down to his level, boops his nose affectionately with the pad of her thumb. “Listen, bug, you deserve an explanation, but I need you to be patient a little while longer while I figure out what we’re doing next, okay?”

He leans forward to press his forehead to hers for a brief moment. “You got it, boss lady.”

The trio’s entrance doesn’t go unnoticed—Deacon always earns a hero’s welcome on his returns, but the hush that spreads from them to Desdemona isn’t for him, or even for June, a stranger in a room full of new agents. All eyes are on Shaun, the first child many of them have seen in months.

“Alright, everyone, get back to work,” Desdemona calls after several heartbeats of awkward silence, during which Shaun shrinks close into June’s side. “There’s enough shit to do without you all stopping to gawp at the first poor kid who wanders down here.”

Some of the noise returns, but plenty of eyes—including Desdemona’s—still follow Shaun’s progress with June and Deacon to the room’s center.

“Fixer,” Des says by way of greeting when they approach. “I wish I could say this is a pleasant surprise, but P.A.M. predicted this would happen.”

June bites back her caustic response. She should be grateful—she and Shaun wouldn’t have gotten away from the Institute without Deacon, and the Railroad can offer better protection than most. She says instead: “That makes one of us. I didn’t see myself coming back, but thanks for getting us out of there all the same.”

“Thank Deacon. It was his unsanctioned op,” Desdemona says coolly, taking a drag from her cigarette. “Look, there’s no tactful way to say this. We need to talk without the kid around.”

June tightens a protective arm around Shaun. “I’m not leaving my son unsupervised with Tinker Tom, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she says. She’s aiming at joking, but lands in tetchy.

“Christ, no,” Des replies. She waves her cigarette at Drummer Boy, who runs over with utterly failing nonchalance. “I had someone a little more stable in mind. That is, if you’re copasetic.”

Before she can answer, Drum is upon them, wrapping June in a bear hug. She responds with vigor, if a little surprise. “You don’t know how much we’ve missed you here,” he murmurs.

Emotion tightens June’s grip on him, and she blinks back tears stinging her eyes. “I missed you, too, kid,” she says with a watery chuckle. She releases him reluctantly, then turns to her son, caught between her and Drum. “Shaun, this is Drummer Boy. He’ll show you around while I talk to Desdemona and Deacon, alright?”

Shaun looks quizzically up at Drummer Boy. “That’s not your real name, is it?”

Drum mimes zipping up his mouth. “I’ll never tell,” he says with a wink. He steps to the side and gestures grandly behind him. “Shall we?”

“Lead the way, Mr. Boy.”

Drummer Boy laughs. “Please, call me Drum,” he says as they saunter off side-by-side.

Desdemona turns to June as soon as they’re out of earshot. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to gain coming back here, Fixer, but we can’t afford dead weight. If you’re here, we need you here all the way.”

Deacon physically steps in front of June, and she can’t help but notice it’s the second time in as many minutes one of Des’s boys has acted the buffer between them. “Woah, Des, put the claws away. Fixer’s been through a lot for us. She doesn’t deserve any more shit from you.”

Des sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose with finger and thumb. Her face softens. “You’re right. Listen, Fixer… for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your son. I wish there had been a better alternative, but—”

“But the Institute forced your hand. Yeah, I know. That was then. Let’s focus on now. There’s a little gang of Institute survivors up my ass, trying to prosecute me in a world without a legal system, so I’m not thrilled about my odds in court. How many are there, and how are we taking them down?”

“We’re not sure, honestly. Maybe 50, maybe 75. It’s hard to count the Gen 2s,” Des says, then shoots Deacon a pointed look. “Deacon was supposed to bring back intel, but he clearly got sidetracked.”

“You wound me, Des.” Deacon pulls a holotape from a pocket of his flak jacket, slaps it on the table. “Didn’t have time to stop by a dead drop. Let it never be said Deacon doesn’t deliver.”

“Well, since you’re here, we may as well debrief now.” She lights a fresh cigarette and takes a drag. “Out with it. What did you find?”

“Like you said—it’s hard to count the Gen 2s.” Deacon rubs his chest absently, shifts to favor his weak knee. “But there’s about a dozen scientists, twenty loyal Gen 3s, ten Coursers, maybe more. Holed up in old CIT student housing. They’d been tracking you for a while, Fixer, but I wasn’t sure exactly what they wanted to do with you. I’m glad you settled that one for us.”

“Happy to be of service,” June says, bone-dry. “How are they teleporting?”

Deacon’s shrug turns into a wince. “Wish I could tell you. They must’ve salvaged some tech from their ruins.”

“Anything else?” Desdemona asks on a smoky exhale.

“Yeah, I gallantly plucked our wayward star agent and her son from the Institute’s shiny claws and brought them home,” Deacon says. “You’re fucking welcome.”

Desdemona sighs again, heavy and put-upon. “Thank you, Deacon. Now, go get those injuries checked out before you collapse on us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Deacon says with a sarcastic salute. He looks at June as if to say something more, but limps off instead.

“A word, Fixer?”

“Balloon,” June jokes, without any real heart behind the word. She snaps her attention back to Des, leaving Deacon’s progress to their good doctor unmonitored.

“Oh, good,” Des says after she takes a long moment and a slow drag from her cigarette to pray for patience. “You don’t know what a relief it is to see your sense of humor intact.”

June thinks about contrition, decides against it, and instead needles Des with her winningest smile and stoniest silence.

Des takes another drag and considers her for another moment, meeting June’s silence with her own unblinking stare. “I need to know you’re back for real before we go any further. Are you ready to take these bastards down for good?”

June beckons for a cigarette, and Des obliges. She inhales deep, blows a ring of smoke toward the ceiling. Des’ cigarettes are better than Deacon’s, and June savors the smooth-bitter-earthy taste. “Des,” she says, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned I’m good at here after the end of the world, it’s revenge. This is the third time the Institute has done me wrong, and I will not let it happen again. I will not let them have Shaun again. If I have to drown the Commonwealth in blood and murder every last one of those sons of bitches to keep him safe, I will do it. If you can promise me that, if you can keep my Shaun safe, I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“I can’t promise anything, Fixer,” Des replies. “But as long as you’re with us, your son will be watched over here, and you will have your revenge.”

Cigarette between her teeth, June goes to the chalkboard on wheels stationed behind Desdemona. It looks suspiciously like the one from the church, crossed-off names and all, and June pauses on Glory’s name, scratched through five months ago now. Her own struck-out alias is still there, the line she drew just the same as last fall. She erases it, then rewrites her name clean and new.

Des blows a puff of smoke through her nose and nods approvingly. “Welcome back, Fixer. Now go see if Carrington’s done with your partner yet. I have a job for you, when you’re ready.”

Deacon’s flat on his back on Carrington’s makeshift operating table, whining piteously, when June approaches. “Ow, ow, owww,” he opines. “Carrington, are you trying to kill me?”

“Only in my wildest dreams, Deacon,” Carrington says, fingers expertly probing Deacon’s side. He looks up to June leaning against the table, arms folded across her chest and a smirk unfolding across her face.

“You hurtin’ my boy, doc?”

“No, I believe that’s your purveyance, Fixer,” Carrington deadpans.

“Tou-fuckin’-che,” June says around a forced chuckle. She pretends the barb doesn’t sting—honestly, it’s not like she doesn’t deserve that one.

Deacon reaches up to pat June’s arm weakly, fingers clutching at her bicep. “My hero,” he wheezes. “My knight in shining armor. Have you come to rescue me from this foul beast?”

Her smile is indulgent when she reaches down to pat his cheek. “Suck it up, you big, whiny baby.” She looks back up at Carrington. “What’s the verdict?”

“Minor lacerations, three bruised ribs, a sprained knee. Nothing some stitches, a stimpak, and a day’s rest won’t fix. Speaking of…” He slides a stimpak into Deacon’s forearm, then patches a little bandage over the needlemark. “Now get him off my table, will you? I have real patients who need my aid.”

“You heard the man. Up you get.” June tosses Deacon’s shirt and jacket to him while he sits up.

“Where to, my liege?” Deacon slides his jacket across his shoulders and hops off the table.

“To my son, wherever Drummer Boy whisked him away to.”

“A daring quest, indeed,” Deacon says. He gestures extravagantly. “Thataway, fair lady.”

Carrington calls out to Fixer as they leave, and she turns to look at him over her shoulder. “It’s good to have you back.”

She nods. “It’s good to be back, Carrington.”  


—  
 

They find Shaun and Drummer Boy bent over an ancient foosball table in the rec room, both giggling like the boys they are. It’s easy to forget, with his deep voice and towering height, but Drum’s barely out of his teens, and it’s clear he’s enjoying the excuse to act his age with Shaun. 

June sidles up to them, taking up the defensive on Shaun’s team, and Deacon mirrors her with Drum. “Alright boys, who’s winning?”

“I am!” Shaun crows, and bumps hips with June.

“That’s my boy.” She blocks an incoming hit from Drummer Boy, kicking it to Shaun’s offensive line for him to shoot. He takes the opportunity eagerly, blasting the little golfball down the table. At the other end, Deacon—fumbles?—and lets out an exclamation of dismay when the ball slides into its goal. Shaun cheers, fists pumping the air, and June gives Deacon a look. His shrug is slight, his grin sly. He never could fool her.

Drummer Boy reaches over the table to shake Shaun’s hand. “Good game, kid. Rematch later?”

Shaun pumps Drum’s hand with vigor. “Why not now?”

“How about some food first, striker?” June says with a laugh. “Your mama’s starving here.”

“The mess is right across the hall,” Drum offers, ever-helpful. “You missed breakfast, but Cookie should be in the kitchen. Talk to her and she’ll get you taken care of.”

“Thanks, Drum,” June says. “We’ll catch up with you and Deacon later, yeah?”

She makes her way with Shaun across the hall and through the cavernous mess to the kitchen, where a curly-haired ghoul is cheerfully humming along to the radio while washing dishes. June clears her throat, and the ghoul turns.

“Well, hello!” she wipes her wet hands on her apron and proffers one for a shake.

“Cookie, I presume?” June asks, taking the hand.

“The one and only!” Cookie’s thin lips part in a sunny smile. “You must be Fixer and Shaun. You caused quite the buzz at breakfast this morning.”

“I’m sorry we missed it,” June says with an answering grin. “Command was plenty attention for us, though.”

“You must be famished!” Cookie claps her hands. “Let me fix up some plates for you. There’s plenty left from breakfast.”

“Than—”

Cookie shoos the pair out of the kitchen, clucking. “Hush, hush. Go have a seat and I’ll bring your food in a jiffy.”

The mess is blessedly quiet—it’s late enough in the morning that everyone’s already begun their day, so June and Shaun have the cafeteria to themselves. June beelines to a coffee carafe against a wall, pours herself a generous mug, then goes to sit across from Shaun at a table.

“How are you feeling?” she reaches over to brush the hair out of his face.

Shaun shrugs. “I’m okay, Mama. I miss Codsworth and Dogmeat already.”

“Me too, but they’re safer in Diamond City for now.”

He nods, picking at the table’s peeling paint. “I remember Drummer Boy, from before. And Desdemona and Tinker Tom, too. They were all there when you got me from the Institute. Deacon looks different, though.”

“Yeah, he changes his face so the bad guys won’t recognize him.” June takes a deep breath. “Listen, Shaun, there’s some things I have to tell you, about my life and the Railroad, and what happened at home and why we’re here now.”

“You blew up our house to hide from the Institute, right? Because you blew up their stuff, before?”

Here’s what she tells him: Yes, the Institute attacked them because she destroyed their headquarters last fall. She was working with the Railroad, whose mission is to free the synths enslaved by the Institute. Now she has to work with the Railroad again to keep the synths free and protect their little family. (Anything else about himself or herself or where either of them really came from will have to wait—some truths are too big for breakfast.) At one point, Cookie brings two cafeteria trays loaded with fried Cram, toast, scrambled mirelurk eggs, mutfruit, and brahmin milk.

Shaun is quiet for a while after, picking at the scraps on his plate. “Is this where we live now?”

“For a little while. I might take you to stay with Nick in a couple weeks, but we’re safest here right now.”

He sits up on his knees to lean in close until they’re nose-to-nose. “Did you know,” he whispers conspiratorially, “that they have real showers here?”

June’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline. “ _Real_ showers? Really?”

Shaun nods knowingly. “ _Real. Showers_.”

She grabs his wrists where his hands are planted on the table. “You must show me!”  


—  
               

After they’re all cleaned up, Shaun takes June to the dorms. It’s a far cry from the old church—no mattresses and piles of bodies (neither sleeping nor dead) in the command center here, no sir. A half-dozen rooms all lined with bunk beds fill the hall across from the showers, and Shaun takes her to a pair of bunks in the corner of the very last room. 

“Drummer Boy said we could use these beds,” he tells June, matter-of-fact, as he plops down on the bottom bunk.

“Well, isn’t that nice of him.” She pushes him over to roll into the bed, tucking herself up in the corner against the wall. She pats the space next to her, and Shaun curls up against her side.

“Tell me a story, Mama,” he demands around a yawn.

June adjusts the pillow behind her, settling into their little cocoon. “Alright. Once upon a time…”

She’s startled awake by a quiet cough.

“Sleepin’ on the job, eh?” Deacon smirks down at her.

June lays a finger across her lips, adjusts her glasses gone askew, and extricates herself from the sleeping boy sprawled across her. He groans, but doesn’t wake, burrowing into the warm spot she leaves.

“How’re you feeling?” June asks once they’re out in the hallway.

“Like a million caps, boss. Why, you got plans?”

“Well, I am in the market for a street-smart but loveable sidekick. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone, would you?”

“Oh, I dunno, Fixer,” Deacon says, shrugging broadly. “These new recruits… Well, let’s just say they don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

“Who said anything about a newbie?” June scoffs, but there’s a twinkle in her eye. “I need me someone who’s been around this block a time or two.”

He nods, pensive. “You sure about that? You know, the vets usually come with extra baggage.”

“Maybe, but they also know all the good tricks,” June says with a sly grin.

“Like this one?” He reaches behind her ear and, with a flourish, presents a shiny cap held between his thumb and index finger. He waggles his eyebrows. “Eh? Eh? Pretty good, right?”

June rolls her eyes and laughs despite herself. “Just like that.” Her grin turns sly again and she tilts her chin to peer up at him through thick, dark lashes. “Whaddaya say, D? Team Death Bunnies, back together again?”

Her own reflection in his sunglasses doesn’t tell her much, but the smirk tugging at his lips and his posture, shoulders loose and open to her, say plenty. “Think the Commonwealth can handle it?”

June’s grin widens. “They won’t know what hit ‘em. Now, what did you wake me up for?”

“Oh, Des wants to see us,” Deacon says. “Something about a mission.”

June goes back to the dorm room to tuck Shaun in, brushing his hair aside and planting a kiss on his forehead; she leaves a note that she’s at Command in case he wakes while she’s gone. Then she jogs with Deacon to Desdemona and the assignment waiting for them.

“You two, together again… The Institute doesn’t know what they’re in for,” Des says with a wan smile when the pair saunters up to her.

“If we do it right, they should have some idea from the last time.” June’s answering smile is more like a grimace: thin-lipped and grim.

“What’ve you got for us, Des?” Deacon leans over the table, casually rifling through the folders and dossiers and handwritten reports scattered about.

Des reaches around him to pull a file from the pile and push it under his wandering hands. “We got word of another small camp of Institute survivors. We don’t think they’ve made contact with the group at CIT yet, and we want to keep it that way. I need you to go out there and take care of them.” She pushes more papers out of the way to uncover a Commonwealth map spread across the table. She taps a spot with an unlit cigarette. “They should be around here. Not more than ten of them. Try to save the synths, if they want to be saved.”

The camp is far south, and June’s quick math creases her brow with a worried frown. “We’ll be gone at least four days,” she says. “What about Shaun?”

“Cookie and Drummer Boy can help keep an eye on him while you’re gone,” Des says, brusque.

“He’ll need a terminal to do his lessons. He’ll need someone making sure he keeps on a schedule,” June pushes. “He’s a little boy, Des, he needs structure.”

“There’s a terminal in the rec room he can use. Cookie will make sure he eats well, and Drummer Boy can follow up on his schoolwork and get him to bed on time,” Des replies smoothly, unflappable. “He’ll be fine, Fixer.”

June nods. “Yeah, okay. I’ll need to talk to Drum before we leave, then.”

“Of course.”

There are preparations to be made: June gives Drummer Boy the hard drive from her old terminal and writes out painfully detailed instructions for Shaun’s schoolwork; she and Deacon raid the Railroad’s armory to replace some of the gear she lost (she comes out with the most glorious sawn-off shotgun she’s ever seen in her life, and some leg braces that don’t chafe, to boot); June wakes Shaun to get dinner and fill him in; and she and Deacon study the mission dossier, map out their plan, and pack.

It’s late by the time they get all their shit together; they haven’t moved from the cafeteria table where they set up shop after dinner. Shaun snores gently, head in June’s lap, and Deacon slumps over their bag of gear, sunglasses pushed high on his head.

June shifts Shaun off her lap to stand and stretch out her stiff limbs. “Better turn in,” she says with a mighty yawn. “Can’t go oversleeping my alarm on my first day on the job.”

“Yeah, I hear the boss is one mean son of a bitch.” Deacon smirks over at her as he stands and shoulders their bag.

June snorts and scoops the last of their junk from the table into a khaki rucksack. “Deacon, please. You are neither the boss nor a mean son of a bitch.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Deacon says, gathering Shaun up in his arms, “I was talking about you.”

June opens her mouth to call him a rude name, but then her son turns into Deacon’s chest with a murmur and her heart constricts. She moves closer to them, brushing her fingers through Shaun’s messy shock of dark hair.

“He’s really taken to you,” she says with a tender smile directed toward her son.

Deacon follows June’s lead and gazes down at Shaun, eyes soft. “He looks like you when he sleeps.”

June hums in agreement and traces her fingertips over the constellation of freckles sprinkling his cheeks and nose. “Well,” she says after she shoves away the _this is how it should have been_ that pulls her heart down to her gut, “let’s get this mini-me to bed.”

They walk together to the dorms, where Deacon tucks Shaun in, and when he straightens and turns to June, the softness from holding Shaun still hangs around his shoulders.

“We never did get a proper hello, you know,” she says quietly, and his hands are already halfway to her waist when she moves to wrap her arms around him in a tight embrace.

“I'm not much of a hugger,” Deacon reminds her, but she feels the twitch of a smile in his cheek against her neck, and his arms are snug around her lower back.

“Shut up, asshole,” June says and tightens her arms around him. When he breaks away a few slow, steady heartbeats later, his hand meanders up to graze her cheek with bandaged knuckles.

“Welcome back, Fixer,” Deacon murmurs.

She bounces up to kiss his cheek, a delicate hand planted on his shoulder. “See you in the morning, Deacon.”

He looks at her for a long moment before he replies, “Night,” and sidles past her out of the room.

June leans against the bedframe with a sigh. It hasn’t been the longest day of her life, not by a longshot, but it still makes the top five, if you count the whole setting fire to her own home and running for her life in the middle of the night part (which did happen past midnight, so it definitely counts in her book).

Shaun was taking it all surprisingly well; he already loved Drummer Boy, and Tinker Tom, too (just… always with supervision), and he only dissolved into tears when she told him she had to leave. It had taken everything in her to not melt into a puddle right there with him, but then sweet, brave Shaun had rubbed his puffy red eyes, crawled into her lap, and told her if anyone was going to save all the synths, he was glad it was his mama.

June gazes down at him, sleeping soundly, and after briefly considering the top bunk they’ve also been allotted, crawls into the bottom bunk with her son and curls up around him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more coming, promise, but I'm slow and easily distracted. Bear with me, and if you want to come to Tumblr and harass me in the meantime, I'm restivewit. Thank you for reading! :)


	3. Chapter 3

The sun is just glimmering on the horizon when June and Deacon clamber out of the subway station. They’re soon awarded with blazing sunshine—uncharacteristic even for the Commonwealth’s unpredictable February—that has them peeling off layers of scarves and hats and coats until June is sweating even in her lightweight henley. She seriously considers stripping off her chest plate, too, but the last time she did that, she wound up with enough shrapnel in her that the the Institute could’ve stamped a barcode on her ass and thrown her in the tunnels to dig with the rest of the machine men, and no one would’ve been the wiser. So she keeps it on.

“Alright, Deac, time to fill me in. What have I missed?” They’re in for a long walk, even following the ancient highway, and June has to kill the silence somehow. Might as well learn something.

Deacon shrugs. “Not much, Fixer. You were present for all the big stuff. Defeating our mortal enemies, bringing peace to the Commonwealth, et cetera, et cetera.” He flashes her a lopsided smile. “You missed the window to join me and Drum’s band, but we’re always looking for new groupies, if you need a hobby.”

“You’re hilarious.” Her need to get reconnected outweighs her desire to indulge his little fantasy, so she changes tack: “Let’s play 20 Questions.”

There’d be mock dismay in his eyes if she could see them—limited to variations of “yes” and “no,” Deacon’s fondness for telling tall tales is curbed. But the corner of his mouth twitches upward, and with the practiced ease of a bargain that’s been struck a hundred times before, he says, “Make it ten and you have a deal.”

June spits in her palm and holds it out to Deacon, who responds in kind, and they shake.

“Do you know how many are in the Railroad now?” she asks.

He hesitates, then nods. “More or less.”

“Is that a yes?” Even confined to the rules of their own stupid game, Deacon finds a way to weasel out of direct answers.

“Ten questions, Fixer.” He reminds her with a grin that’s all crooked Wastelander teeth. “But I’m feeling generous, so I’ll let that one slide.”

She pulls a face at him, tongue out and eyes squinted. “More than fifty?”

June catches the curve of his eyebrows arching over his sunglasses. “Hell no, Fixer, are you crazy?”

She just shrugs. “Thirty?”

“Warmer.”

“Forty?”

“You’re smokin’, pal.”

June hums. “Are you actively recruiting?”

His mouth thins. “Do we ever?”

That the Railroad’s recruitment is reactive and not proactive has always been a source of tension between Deacon and Desdemona—and, respectively, June and Des. So nothing’s changed there. “Any new safehouses?”

“Just the shiny Bunker.”

“You find a lot of Institute pockets?”

“Enough to keep us on our toes.”

“That’s not an answer.” It technically is—a vague answer for a vague question, but June knows Deacon gets the spirit of her interrogation and she’ll be damned if he doesn’t give her what she’s looking for.

“Every couple weeks a new group shows up. Usually they’re small, easy to take out.”

“You think this latest one is a real threat?”

He gives her a blank look. “Yeah.”

“How long—” she sighs and remembers the rules. “Have you been watching me since I left?”

He turns his eyes back to the road and shrugs. “Someone had to keep an eye on you. Last question, chica. Make it a—” He cuts off suddenly, raises a fist— _stop!_ —and grabs June’s arm to pull them behind some wreckage off the road. He points, and June squints through the blown-out windows of the car, pushing her glasses up her nose. Finding her prescription out here is almost impossible, and her latest lenses really aren’t much help—so whatever Deacon’s pointing at is just a distant brown-grey blur. She makes a show of taking off her glasses and cleaning the lenses, then reaffixes them to her face and raises an eyebrow at Deacon.

He mouths a sheepish apology and twists his hand, grotesque in mock rigor-mortis— _ferals_.

Her response is a quick _How many?_

Deacon’s hand wobbles, palm down. He's not sure, but A lot, his hand continues. June squints hard at the road again, and this time she notes how the blur bobs and shifts, indistinct shapes shuffling and swaying. She breathes a curse, then looks at him and puts her fists up like she’s boxing, the abbreviated question clear: Can we fight them?

He tilts his chin to eye her over the rim of his sunglasses. “Look, I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here, being half-blind and all,” he stage-whispers, “but the scientific term for what’s out there is ‘a shit-load of crazy irradiated bastards.’”

She bares her teeth in a frustrated scowl. “So that’s a no?”

“‘Fraid so, peaches.”

June sighs, shifts to relieve the ache in her ankles from crouching, and brings up her Pip-Boy map to look for a way around the herd of ferals.

Deacon traces a meandering, northeasterly curve, leaving a ghostly green trail on the screen from the pressure of his finger.

“That’ll take us hours,” she gripes.

“I mean, we could cut straight south and swim to Bunker Hill... Haven’t had a good dose of the rads or hypothermia in a while.”

Her scowl darkens. “I hate when you’re right. Let’s get going before they smell us.”

Deacon’s self-satisfied huff of a chuckle is insufferable and endearing.

—

“Do you even know what a peach is?” She asks later, once they've settled into their new route.

“You get ten free, no-bullshit yes-or-no questions, and that’s what you ask? C’mon, I know you can do better.”

“First of all, I get to ask all the questions I want,” she kicks back with a quick grin. “But to answer yours, no. I’m just working up to the real hardball.”

“The suspense is killing me.” His voice is bored sarcasm, but she catches the hitch in his breath, the smallest twitch in his fingers at his side. Honesty gives him anxiety—which June knows makes her a panic attack waiting to happen. (With Deacon, June takes her wins where she can get them.)

When it does come, June’s question is quiet, serious, thick with shared history. “Are we okay?”

She sees the moment his instinct takes over, shutting her out with a dismissive smirk. “Why wouldn’t we be? You said it yourself: Team Death Bunnies, back together again. All’s right with the world.”

“You promised no bullshit, Deacon.”

He shrugs. “Can’t help it.” She keeps quiet, and after a moment, he sighs heavily. “Look, Fixer, this isn’t a talk to have in the middle of an op. I’m in your corner, and that’s not gonna change. The rest…” His shoulders rise and fall again, one hand fluttering upward, like something blowing away in the wind. She recognizes the gesture as one of hers. It aches.

“You’re stalling. It’s fine, I get it. You just can’t handle the truth,” June says, throwing him (and, let’s be honest, herself) a bone in a smile and a joke before she can dwell too long on his implication.

Their roundabout new path gets them to Bunker Hill, eventually, in the early evening. They split apart at the gate: Deacon wanders off to track down the tourist he’s been wooing, and June beelines to say hello to Tony Savoldi and sweet-talk as much gossip out of him as she can manage.

It takes a while to work up to what she’s really looking for—there’s the “no, I didn’t die” stage to talk through, then the “I’m so sorry I dropped off the face of the earth for four months, you know you’re one of my dearest friends and I would never do that to you if it wasn’t an emergency,” (and the subsequent “no, but not like that much of an emergency, obviously I didn’t want to bother you with my little problems”) and then the “so how’ve you been lately?” until she can slip in a casual question about what he’s heard of the Institute since the nuking last November.

Short answer: not much.

“Thought you Railroad fellas really kicked the crap outta those guys after they came here,” Tony says. “They must be too scared to come ‘round these parts anymore.”

That’s when Deacon sidles up, and Tony’s expression shifts. “So, uh, what can I do for you today?”

June lays an easy hand on his arm and smiles, warm and soft. “Don’t worry. He’s one of us. We’ll have two of today’s special.”

It’s the dinner rush, so they pull away from the crowding bar with their plates of… whatever and take up post on the roof above the bar. June kicks her legs over the edge while they both dig in, unceremoniously talking through mouths full of food.

“Get anything good?” June asks.

“My guy’s been working caravans to get packages moved, but he doesn’t know a goddamn thing about our boogeymen. You?”

“Ditto. Tony talks like he doesn’t know anything. My guess is they’re staying away from trade routes and populated areas while they regroup.”

Deacon scrapes his plate. “Well, at least we got some decent grub. Would’ve preferred some Blamco mac and real intel, but you win some, you lose some, mmh?”

June’s too busy licking her spoon to reply with anything more eloquent than a grunt. When she’s satisfied, she takes Deacon’s plate and skips down the stairs to return their dirty dishes.

“Can I get anything else for ya?” Tony asks. “It’s gettin’ dark. You need a couple rooms for the night?”

“No thanks, Tony. We’re moving on tonight—official business and all.”

“Be careful out there,” he says. Then he nods to Deacon, coming down the stairs. “You watch her back. Lotta people in the Commonwealth owe her their lives.”

“Don’t I know it.”

—

They hug close to the sides of buildings, keeping in shadows and dark doorways. It’s slow going, but June figures it’s better than getting their heads blown off by a sniper on a roof—or, worse, having to listen to Deacon bitch about the possibility.

“Whose idea was it to run through Boston after dark?” June grouses, pausing to peek around the corner of a building.

“Yours. It was your idea.”

June sighs. “It was a bad idea.”

“Can you repeat that? Enunciate clearly into the microphone, pretty please.”

She turns to give him a dirty look, then steps into the intersection. As if on cue, the sharp report of a rifle from above is punctuated by the bullet crashing into the pavement inches ahead of June’s feet. She swears viciously and dives into a doorway, Deacon close behind.

“Told you,” he says. His teeth gleam in the dark.

“Gunners?” she asks, deliberately ignoring his jibe.

“Probably. Raiders and Muties aren’t smart enough for warning shots.”

June grunts and pushes at the boarded-up door. It doesn’t budge. “Well. What now?”

Deacon looks up, scanning upper-story windows and rooftops for the glint of a scope or the glow of sights. He points to the catty-corner roof. “Sniper there.” His finger moves to a third-story window in the building directly ahead of them. “...And there.”

“Deacon, you know I can’t see that far.”

“You need new glasses,” he says, kneeling to take aim with his hunting rifle.

“Sure, I’ll get right on that. Let me call my optometrist and schedule an appointment.”

Deacon snorts. “Just say the word, boss.”

June hops on the balls of her feet, shaking her neck and shoulders loose. “Word.”

She catches half of his smirk before turning to sprint to the building across the street, Deacon’s cover fire clearing the way. She barrels through the threshold into the decrepit ground-floor coffee shop, pausing only long enough to shine her Pip-Boy’s light around the room to open up the dark corners, and then she’s off again, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

The sniper barely has time to turn before she crashes into him, stuffing the barrel of her shotgun into his gut, pulling the trigger, and kicking him out the window. June pauses to gasp for breath and nurse the stitch in her side for just a quick second before flashing her Pip-Boy _long-short-long_ in a signal to Deacon.

She doesn’t wait for a response, instead taking the last flight of stairs up to the roof, where it’s her turn to be the distraction. The fluorescent green Pip-Boy light to draw their eye, some SMG fire to keep them on their toes, and Deacon’s clear to mosey down the street to say hello. He doesn’t take long; June crouches to load a fresh clip into her gun, and when she pops up again, he’s flicking his flashlight at her. She signals back, then dashes down to the ground.

Deacon meets her on her side of the street, keeping his head down as he crosses. “Can't be that easy,” he says.

June hums in agreement. “I don’t like this. Their buddies will have heard the fight; we should get out of here.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he quips, and takes off down the sidewalk at a brisk jog. June hops to catch up.

She might not be able to see for shit, but June’s ears work just fine—and hers and Deacon’s aren’t the only steps she hears. She tilts her head toward Deacon, a question in her eyes, and he nods. He hears them, too, so they duck into the nearest not-completely-destroyed building. There’s not much left of the stairs, but a little creativity and a lot of effort get them to the second floor, where Deacon takes up a post by the street-facing window. He crooks a finger at June, and she slips across the room to peer out the window with him. She pulls her glasses off; they’re more harm than help, really, especially at night. Without the jerry-rigged spotlights haloing her vision, she can make out two groups advancing down the street, parallel but on opposite sides, with military precision. The Gunners run in squads of four, so two squads means—

“Eight?” June asks.

Deacon confirms.

“What’s the plan?”

Deacon smiles crookedly at her. “Good a place as any for a last stand, don’t-cha think?”

“Honestly, I don’t know why we call it that. It’s not like we actually think this is the end.” June’s grin matches Deacon’s, and she’s already pulling fishing line and a trio of frag grenades from her bag.

“It’s all about the drama, pal.”

“Truer words, D-Man. Help me rig up this grenade bouquet. We don’t have a lot of time now.” With some precarious climbing and only one near-death experience, June strings up the grenades so they’ll spill to the foot of the stairs when she releases the line. Then she positions herself so she can see both Deacon at the window and the door on the ground floor. It’s not long before Deacon signals their guests’ arrival, his sign language telling her only one squad is at the door.

She wants to wait until she can see the wet gleam of their eyes to drop the grenades, but their pointman is wearing sunglasses—fucking Gunners. She settles for releasing her string when the first guy spots her, and the grenades roll beautifully to the Gunners’ feet before going off.

June takes a flying leap down the stairs before the smoke clears, shins shuddering with the impact when she lands. (She’ll pay for that later, she knows, but oh, man, was it fun in the moment.) She finishes off the two Gunners downed by the grenades, while Deacon behind her at the top of the stairs shoots a third. The fourth had the good sense to hang back, but she rushes June howling the moment her last buddy goes down.

June doesn’t have time to do much but brace for impact, planting her feet, bending her knees, and leaning in to meet the incoming body head-on. The Gunner’s forehead connects with the side of June’s neck in a moment of uncomfortable intimacy, and she can feel breath hot against her skin. June presses forward, shoving back before the other woman can get any purchase. She follows up with a brutal knee to the groin that doubles the woman with a groan of pain, and June takes the advantage to press her gun into the soft space between her helmet and armor and pull the trigger. The Gunner goes down quiet (or maybe June just can’t hear her, with the shotgun blast on top of her own ears already ringing), but definitely not clean.

Deacon makes a noise of disgust while June wipes blood out of her eyes with only marginal success, and she squints into the darkness to find the rest of the Gunners. The second squad has hunkered down across the street, fortified behind improvised barricades of sandbags and rubble.

She spots light reflecting off a roving scope a moment too late—the rifle’s crack is followed by a blindingly painful pressure that starts above her bellybutton and blooms across her torso. She stumbles back and lands flat on her ass, then rolls blindly out of the doorway and out of their line of sight.

June tries to curse, but all that comes out is a gut-wrenching cough. So she wriggles a hand under her chest plate to probe for bleeding. The only dampness she finds is sweat, and she sighs in relief.

She can’t see Deacon from his post on the stairs, but she hears the low rumble of concern in his voice: “All bueno, boss?”

June wheezes again. “Never better.” She lets her head fall to the floor and fishes in her back pouch for a stimpak, jabbing it into her thigh without ceremony.

It’s eerily quiet for a moment while June catches her breath, and then suddenly Deacon’s looming over her, hand outstretched. She takes it, and he drags her to her feet.

“What’re they doing?” June asks, inspecting her armor for damage.

“Waiting for us.”

“That's kind of them.” She feels out the bullet lodged in her plate, along with the spiderweb of tiny cracks radiating out from it, and lets out a displeased grunt. She'll have to take it to Tinker Tom to see if he can't fix it up. Otherwise, she'll be commissioning him for new armor.

Deacon lifts his sunglasses to look her in the eye, asking a question.

She pats his cheek. “I’m fine, really. This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot,” she say, the smallest of smiles pressing at the corners of her mouth. “I was even wearing armor this time.”

“Count your blessings.” He lets his glasses fall back into place, then hands her a bottle pre-stuffed with an old rag and produces a lighter from his pocket.

June grimaces. “We don’t have regular frags left? I hate using these.”

“Hey, remember that time when you went all gung-ho and rigged up a grenade bouquet for four li’l ole mercenaries?”

With a sigh, she trades Deacon’s lighter for her submachine gun and waits for him to lay down enough cover fire for her to slip out the door without getting shot down again. Soon as he’s in position, she lights her makeshift wick, steps out onto the sidewalk, and sends the molotov cocktail sailing toward the Gunners, where it smashes to the ground just behind their barricade and coats half the group in liquid fire.

Steeling herself against the bone-chilling screams of panic, June bolts across the street to take advantage of the distraction being lit on fire creates. It’s easy enough for her to finish off the two poor burning suckers, and the other two are distracted enough by the flames that she puts a bullet in one’s head before the last figures out what’s happening. And then it doesn’t matter, because Deacon’s behind him and he’s falling forward, clutching at his slit throat.

The sudden, deafening quiet leaves nothing but ringing in her ears, and June bends to put her head between her knees, fighting off nausea from the stench of blood and burnt flesh and the unused-to physical activity.

Deacon’s mouth is full of mirth when she straightens a minute later. “Need a breather, rookie?”

She shows him her middle finger, along with a tired quirk of her lips. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

—

June’s stimpak high is long gone by the time she and Deacon find a spot secure enough to stop for the night—a decrepit Red Rocket just outside South Boston, after nearly four hours of skulking between ruined skyscrapers avoiding the roving gangs that never seem to sleep—and every too-deep breath makes the soreness in her gut clench. While June gingerly squirms out of her busted shell of ceramic armor, Deacon busies himself with the work of setting up camp, whistling with the radio.

Once her armor’s shed, June steps into the light of the little fire Deacon’s tending to get a better look at herself. Goosebumps prickle where she peels off her shirt to reveal the brown-sugar skin of her abdomen flushed and mottled red, a fist-sized welt above her belly button already deep and angry purple where the bullet punched her.

Deacon looks up to check out her bruising. She doesn’t miss the way his gaze lingers, eyes inscrutable behind the sunglasses—but she can read the shape of his mouth and the line of his throat better than his eyes, anyway. “Well, Fixer,” he says, his words, per usual, telling a different story than his face, “it was nice knowing you. Looks like you’re in for a slow and agonizing death.”

“Thanks, Doc,” June replies sarcastically. She presses at her skin carefully, fingers running along her ribs to feel for sprains or fractures. Nothing feels broken, just unbearably achey. She eases down to sit next to Deacon, reaching blindly for their first-aid kit. He drops it in her waiting hands, and she pulls out a jar of ointment that’ll help with the swelling. The smell is pungent when she pops off the lid, her skin tingling where the goop touches.

She notices Deacon’s face still angled toward her, watching her rub the ointment on her stomach, and the words are out before she can help herself—accompanied by fluttering eyelashes and a come-on smile, no less, because June isn’t one to half-ass anything. “Looking to lend a helping hand?”

He looks away quickly, face closing. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

There’s a few heartbeats of awkward silence. “Shit.” June cringes. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. It just slipped out.”

“Don’t worry about it, chica,” Deacon says, standing and brushing dirt off his pants. “I'm gonna go scrounge up some more firewood.”

And then she’s left alone in the gas station’s back office, belly hanging out and a heat in her cheeks that has nothing to do with the fire.

June waits a few minutes for her skin to absorb the ointment, then bundles up in a thick, clumpy woolen sweater that leaves everything to the imagination. Loath to leave the warmth and security of the fire, she spreads out a makeshift workbench on her sleeping bag: fractured armor, duct tape, super glue, and a chest-sized sheet of some unidentified metal that should be sturdy enough to hold for a couple more days, sure. It looks like a nightmare held together by a wish and a prayer, but it’ll have to do until she can get back to Double T and let him work his magic. Satisfied, she packs up her little toolkit, lays aside her armor, and rolls up in her sleeping bag.

Deacon comes back a few minutes later, a bundle of damp, anemic twigs under his arm. She peeks up at him with one open eye. “I set the alarm for 3,” she tells him.  
It’s obscenely early and means just few thin hours of sleep, but they’re still a ways from where intel says the Institute camp should be, and they’ll need the benefit of dark for an effective attack. Deacon just nods, adds a few of the driest little sticks to the fire, and creeps into his own sleeping bag.

June stares at the crackling fire for what feels like an age before she falls asleep.

—

It’s pitch-dark when her Pip-Boy buzzes; the only color in the room is the soft orange of the dying embers. June groans and sits up, leaning over to poke the fire and add enough kindling to stoke a flame. While the fire wakes up, Deacon sets to getting their breakfast: an uninspiring brick of hearty, travel-proof bread, and, more importantly, a kettle and a pouch of instant coffee.

Meanwhile, June busies herself with packing up. It’s really pretty simple, just rolling up their sleeping bags and strapping her armor on over her clothes, and by the time she’s finished, Deacon’s got the coffee poured into a thermos and the fire stamped out.

They set off in silence, munching on their bread chunks and passing the thermos back and forth.

June's breath plumes before her when she breathes in deep, then out, then— “Deacon, about earlier...”

“Let’s talk later, Fixer.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine.” There's not much to the frigid walk to their checkpoint—some pre-war planned neighborhood—so June just focuses on her steps, slow and deliberate (and a little bit ginger, thanks to her shin splints from yesterday’s stunt) on the icy ground. Beside her, Deacon’s pace matches hers almost step-for-step.

She tips her head back to look at the blanket of stars above. Three hours from dawn, the stars are at their brightest, brighter than they’d ever been before the war, even back on her family's Pennsylvania farm. June loves the stars—who doesn't?—but something about nighttime’s always put her off. Too dark, too many shadows, too much hiding and secrets and uncertainty. She shivers and hugs her heavy canvas jacket closer to her body, sparing a glance toward Deacon.

He embraces these shadows, wears night better than anyone she knows, and for all his witticisms and soliloquizing and verbal diversions, Deacon wears night’s blanket of silence surprisingly well, too.

She’s still trying to figure that one out.

“You’re doing that thing,” Deacon says, eyes ahead.

“What thing?”

He gestures vaguely to his ear. “Those gears turning up in your noggin. I can hear you think. It’s distracting.”

June snorts. “Distracting you from what? This riveting walk we’re on?”

He swings his head to give her an unimpressed look. June just rolls her eyes. They’re quiet after that, settling into the monotony of their routine—unspoken mess notwithstanding.

When they crest the hill above the Institute’s neighborhood hideout, it's an hour yet before dawn. But the courtyard inside the circle of houses is aglow with floodlights hooked to small generators and bustles with activity. That's not right—a small camp of hapless scientist and hive-minded synths, like the intel suggested, should still be sound asleep, by all reasoning.

Deacon’s cheeks puff, breath rushing out in a heavy sigh. “Well, shit.”

“No kidding.” June's already prepping a brief message to leave at a dead drop: “Mission parameters changed, collecting intel, more to come.”

He reaches into her bag while she's scribbling to get his binoculars, flopping onto his belly to get a better angle. When she finishes the note, June joins him on the half-frozen ground and whispers, “What's it look like down there?”

“Lots of movement” —something she can tell even without binoculars, even with her nearsightedness— “a couple Coursers, squads of armed Gen 1 and 2s. They’re busy little bees…” He trails off, distracted.

June gives him five minutes, then pokes his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“They’re packing up. Piling all their junk in the middle of the courtyard. Oh, shi—”

The world lights up in a blinding white flash and the Institute teleporter cracks. Deacon hisses and pulls the binoculars away from his eyes, blinking. “That thing should come with a warning. Caution: Avoid staring directly at bright objects, like the sun, a nuclear explosion, or an Institute teleporter.”

June indulges him with a brief chuckle. “Who’s visiting?”

He rubs his eyes and goes back to surveilling. “Another squad of 1s and 2s and their Strider babysitter.”

“We need to get a closer look.” June shifts, craning her neck to look past her tree-trunk cover at the houses below.

Deacon rolls up to a crouch, mouth set in a grim line. “We can't risk them spotting you. I'll take a look-see. You keep watch up here.”

“No way. Splitting up never ends well for us,” June says, brow creasing. “I'm coming with you.”

He looks at her in a rare moment of unguarded eye contact, glasses still propped on his forehead from using the binoculars. “Are you loving this irony as much as I am?”

June blinks, caught off-guard, then mimics his low monotone from earlier. “‘Let’s talk later, Fixer.’ I figured you meant after we get back, not in the literal middle of the op.”

Deacon shrugs, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.” He stares at her a breath longer, then looks away toward the Institute camp. “Your battering-ram approach to espionage isn’t going to win us any points here. You know if you try to go down there they’ll see you, and even you can’t take on all of them right now.” He taps her metal-braced chest plate as a reminder.

June relents. “Take this, then,” she says with a sigh, trading his binoculars for a Stealth Boy.

He disappears a moment later, the only trace of him the soft rustling of weeds and his faint scent of cigarette smoke and laundry soap.

June settles into Deacon’s old spot and brings the binoculars to her eyes, twisting the focus to get a clear view. (It’s the best she’s seen in weeks—she’s tempted to glue the damn things to her face just for the privilege of functioning eyesight.) She amuses herself for a moment trying to find Deacon (without success), then counts the scientists zapping out, always accompanied by a Courser and a couple synths. She sees every uniform color, but the blues outnumber the others—Advanced Systems. That explains the teleporting, then. If anyone could salvage tech from the wasted Institute crater, it'd be Madison Li’s people—with or without her, they’re the most resourceful of the bunch.

It’s not one of her most riveting stakeouts, watching the camp’s slowly deconstruct while the sun lights up the world around her. But a couple hours into her watch, a pair of dark, bobbing pigtails explodes from a house and makes a beeline to the one intact swing in the courtyard. June can hear the girl’s delighted laughter all the way from her hilly hideout, all the way above the noise of the camp. The girl swings until an adult—not either of her fathers—beckons her away to disappear in a flash of light. Suddenly it’s hard for June to breathe, or maybe she’s just been lying on her stomach for too long.

The last group zaps out not long after, and Deacon materializes in the courtyard to beckon her down.

“Ready to ransack?” he asks cheerfully as she approaches.

“They have children,” June says quietly in answer.

“Yeah.” Deacon leans down to pick up a forgotten teddy bear, gives it a careful dusting off. “So do we.” He squares up to her, stone-faced. June doesn’t like the look of herself in the reflection of his glasses, but she meets his gaze steadily and takes the bear when, at her nod, he hands it to her.

She sets it in the swing, wondering if it will be missed, or if it was just a temporary comfort. Then she makes a mental note to have an agent stake out the neighborhood in case someone comes back for the lonely bear.

Their search doesn’t turn up much else; the scientists were conscientious in cleaning house. In any case, June and Deacon comb through each building to find a couple hard drives left in terminals—encrypted, and probably wiped, but the Railroad has the resources now to hopefully glean something from them.

By the time they move on, the bright noon sun’s melted away some of the night’s cold, and even the mud squelching at her boots and splashing on her pants can’t dampen June’s pleasure in the warmth on her upturned face.

—

They swing by the nearest dead drop to leave June’s note—with any luck, it’ll get picked up and radioed to Desdemona before they get back. Their trek to Bunker Hill is quiet compared to last night’s scuffle, and they make it back in good time with only one minor mishap: June and Deacon are briefly upheld by a little band of Raiders who think having their names graffitied on a road sign means they own it and can charge a crossing fee. (A mistake they won’t be repeating.)

After a hurried dinner at the bar, Deacon insists in his awkward, joking way (“Hey, I’m not gonna be the one responsible for breaking the Fixer”) she get checked out by Bunker Hill’s doctor, who prods at June’s ribs and shins with brutal efficiency and gives a brusque but positive diagnosis.

“Those bruises are nasty, but nothing broken and no internal bleeding,” Kay says. “You’re lucky. Don’t push it.”

“Great!” June beams. “So we can head home tonight?”

Kay looks incredulous. “No, of course not.” She turns to Deacon. “Didn’t I just tell her not to push it? Get a room from Tony. You two look like you haven’t slept in days.”

Her voice brooks no argument, so they go to get rooms. June chats up Tony for a few minutes, small talk and a little harmless flirting in exchange for the possibility of a bulk rate discount, when, to her surprise, Deacon interrupts her.

“We just need one room for the night,” he tells Tony. At her look, he shrugs and says, “Save the company caps.”

There’s just barely enough space to lay out a sleeping bag on the floor next to the bed, so June has to crawl over Deacon to get to the basin and water pitcher in the corner of the room so she can finally wash off the caked-on gunk from the past couple days.

Dampened by the cool professionalism of working a job, it’s easy to ignore the simmering tension between them, but locked in the quiet room, there’s nothing to distract June from herself. She’s bubbling with the jitters when she asks, “Are we allowed to talk yet?”

“Nope.” Deacon’s flat on his back on top of his bedding, staring straight up at the ceiling. He’s still wearing his sunglasses. “But you’ll be the first to know when I’m ready to get all touchy-feely.”

“Thanks. For the record, I’m really glad we’ve got this one room for the three of us: me, you, and this great big elephant.”

“You’re the ringleader here—you get to tell the elephant when to dance. Now let's drop this little metaphor before it falls apart, yeah?”

Her skin is hot enough to make the frigid water steam when she splashes her face, though that's almost certainly her imagination.

They don’t share any more words that night, or very many the next morning when they pack up to leave, or for most of the chilly walk back to the Bunker.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHE UPDATES! Truly, a miracle. Thanks for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

Word’s spread that the famous Fixer is back (like, back-back), so when she and Deacon finally drag themselves through the rank subway tunnels and onto base, not only is Shaun eagerly awaiting them from his lookout point by the hatch—half the agents at HQ are nonchalantly crowded at the end of the hall, too.

Shaun practically leaps into June’s arms, and the pain when he collides with her bruised body is wholly worth it. “You’re home early!”

“I missed you too much!” she exclaims, gathering him up and spinning in a tight circle. “Couldn’t handle it. Had to cancel the whole mission. Railroad’s gonna have to fire me now, so pack your bag. We’re going on the run.”

Shaun giggles. “You’re joking.”

She kisses his face, ballooning her cheeks in a zerbert, and he giggles louder. It’s music. “You got me. Deacon and I are just too good at our job.”

Her son returns the zerbert on her own cheek. “I missed you too, Mama.”

June sets him down, and they begin their trek down the hall. “How’s your schoolwork going?”

Shaun pulls a face, nose scrunching and shoulders bunching up to his ears. “It's too easy.”

She laughs. “Is that so? I better step up my game, then.” Then she ruffles his hair and tells him, “Go play while I check in with Des. I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

Desdemona beckons them from her perch on the arm of a dilapidated couch behind her station, a cigarette dangling from her lips.

“We got your dead drop. If we’d moved just a day sooner…” She shrugs, shifts to stand. The top of her head hits far below June’s eye level (a fact that always throws June off; for a woman with such a commanding presence, you’d think she’d take up more physical space), and Des’s placid upturned gaze says she’s fully aware of the disparity and doesn’t give two shits. “Oh, well. What’s done is done. What did you find out?”

June relays the broad strokes of the Institute’s movement. “Give me a day to finish my detailed report and analysis,” she concludes, tapping the head of a cigarette on the table before lighting it.

Des grunts. “And your assessment, Deacon?” she asks, turning to him.

“What she said, minus the part about the writing.” Deacon fidgets with his sunglasses. “Are we good here? I’ve got places to be.” Before Des can answer, Deacon saunters off, deceptively nonchalant.

She turns to look at June, eyebrows at her hairline.

June’s mouth goes crooked in a close-lipped, sardonic smile. “Want me to include that in my full report?”

Des’s mouth thins in a frown. “Spare me the details. You’re the Fixer. Just—” she sighs. “Just go fix it.”

—

Blithely disregarding Des’s order in favor of less excruciating—and less futile—tasks, June picks up Shaun, and together they set off on a meandering wild goose chase looking for Tinker Tom.

Given free reign of a base as expansive as the Bunker, Tom succumbs to his proclivity to… spread out. There are half-finished projects all over HQ, and no telling when the mood will strike him to work on any of them. They finally find him in the corner of the rec room, up to his elbows in an ancient vending machine.

“Hey, Double T,” she greets him from the opposite side of the room, where hopefully any surprised reaction won't reach them.

He pulls his goggles up from his eyes and gives them a bright smile. “Fixer and Shaun, my two favorite people! Heard you got back today. How'd the mission go?”

June shrugs. “Got shot, missed the objective. Could’ve been worse, I guess.”

“Better luck next time, eh? What can I do for you?”

“Do you know of any extra eyeglasses sitting around? Mine don’t help a damn sight, and I'd like to be able to see again.” Beside her, Shaun bursts into giggles at her pun and swearing. She jostles him playfully.

Tom’s face twists in thought. “Hmm… nothing on me, but there might be some in the storeroom. Good for disguises, you know?”

“Oh, I know.” An unbidden image of Deacon wearing one of her old scavenged pairs, ridiculous cateye frames with pink-tinted lenses, comes to mind. “I'll check there. Thanks, Tom.”

“You got it, Fixer. You know where to find me if you need anything else.”

June snorts, but the irony of Tinker Tom’s statement is clearly lost on him. “Oh, before I forget—I left my busted armor on your workbench. I did some field repair, but can you make it pretty again?”

“Sure thing. I’ll fix it up and get it back to you before your next mission.”

June grins and thanks him again. “You’re the best,” she says, then pats the doorjamb and turns to move on.

“No, you are!” Tom calls after them.

They make their way to the storeroom, where a gaggle of young agents sits round a table in the corner, playing a raucous game of cards. They go quiet when she and Shaun walk in, three pairs of deer-in-the-headlights eyes turned to her. A knot of pity-sympathy-fear-hope balls up in June’s chest. They might not wear the uniform anymore, but June knows an Institute slave (former or otherwise) when she sees one.

“Any of you know where a girl can get her eyesight checked around here?” she asks, plastering a cheerful smile on her face.

The fourth, the only human, speaks up first, and June recognizes her in a flash of memory. Codename Alia, midnight skin and long braids and hunted eyes; one of the few Ticonderoga survivors, she’s easily been around longer than June.

“Shelves in the back have clothes and sh—” she glances at Shaun, whose attention is drawn to the ramshackle shelves bursting with all manner of merchandise— “stuff,” she finishes lamely. “It's a free-for-all in there, so watch your back.”

“Sounds about right,” June says with a chuckle. “You’re Alia, right? I remember you from Ticon. I'm glad you made it out. Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?”

The woman’s eyes widen briefly and her lips twitch in a responding smile. “Yeah, you saved my life. This is my squad, Chase, Angel, and Switchblade,” she says, gesturing to each in turn.

“Agents run in squads now?” June asks, eyebrows drawing together. The buddy system she and Deacon have (had? Who knows anymore, least of all June) set up is one thing, but a squad of four seems extravagant—and risky—in a way that doesn't match the Railroad’s style.

“Special circumstance, ma’am. These are synths who didn’t get the memory wipe.”

June hums, grinning lopsided and reassuring. “Please don’t call me ma’am.” She gives the synths a closer look, and recognizes the markings of youthful rebellion: all have piercings and ragged haircuts, and she sees a feathery tattoo winding up the one called Angel’s neck. June knows the type: Glory Mark II—everything in them rebels against the Institute, even after it has little influence over them. Their whole existence now is a fuck-you, an unasked-for antithesis to the Institute’s ideals. “So you were all liberated in November?”

“Yeah. Wanted to get out a long time before that, though.” To June's surprise, it's not Alia who answers, but one of the synths—Switchblade? His jet-black hair is shaggy, past his ears, and his forelock is the bright yellow-gold of a bad bleach job. Epicanthic folds and flat, wide nostrils read his genetic makeup as Japanese, June guesses, and she idly wonders what long-dead scientist he came from.

Switchblade’s gaze turns toward Shaun, and something in his face shifts, goes dark. “That—”

“Oh, I’m so rude!” June pulls Shaun to face the little bunch. “Shaun, meet Alia, Chase, Angel, and Switchblade. Everyone, this is my _son_ , Shaun.” Her smile is brittle and sharp as glass shards cemented onto walls to keep intruders out.

Shaun smiles up at the agents, waggles his fingers. “Hi!”

A thick silence threatens.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Shaun,” Alia says, slow and loud in the tone of adults who don’t know children. The synths keep their silence.

“You guys work with my mom?”

Alia looks to June with something like a plea in her eyes, and June ruffles Shaun’s hair. “They sure do, bug. You go on ahead and see what glasses you can find for your blind mom; I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Shaun, eager to explore the aisles of treasures, runs off.

June folds her arms across her chest and pins Switchblade with a hard stare. “Shaun doesn’t remember much about his time in the Institute. You’re not going to remind him. Are we clear?”

Switchblade nods, eyes flinty. “We’re clear.”

June’s mouth curves into something warmer, and her posture softens. “Perfect. It was a pleasure to meet you all,” she says, looking to each of the synths in turn and landing on Alia. “I’d love to hear more about your squad later.”

With that, June squeezes Alia’s shoulder and delves into the storeroom’s bowels.

Whoever organizes the supplies is a packrat of impressive proportions: neatly stacked on shelves piled with other garments, June finds no fewer than four bins filled with eyewear. She and Shaun, promptly distracted from looking for a pair that matches her prescription, make a contest of finding the most ridiculous glasses they can—and the pickings are plenty. It takes twice as long to find a workable pair for her, but who cares? She comes out with a classy pair of horn-rimmed tortoiseshell frames that are a near-perfect match for her sight, and Shaun digs up some well-worn welding goggles he proudly hangs around his neck.

He grabs at June’s left fingers, leveraging her arm to check the time on her Pip-Boy. “Can we eat dinner yet?” he wheedles.

“Yes, please! Let’s go see what Cookie’s cooked up.”

Dinner is a messy, loud affair that reminds June of the dining commons of her undergrad—in tone, if not in volume. The couple dozen agents populating HQ on a given day filter in in pairs and groups, the general consensus being dinner is a family event best enjoyed together.

Cookie presides over the buffet line with the brisk, warm efficiency often affected by the cafeteria lunch ladies of June’s former life. Her face bursts into sunshine when June and Shaun approach, and she insists on loading their plates herself: “Normally I make the kids do it themselves, but you two look like trouble today. I don’t trust you to get your own veggies.”

“But I’m the mom!” June protests, eyes sparkling.

Cookie harrumphs goodnaturedly. “Maybe so, but I’m holding the ladle. You want to eat, you do as I say.” She winks at Shaun, who tries and fails to return the gesture, much to the adults’ mutual amusement.

Once they get their plates, June is temporarily paralyzed by the cafeteria politics of seat choice, but the decision is made easy by virtue of her son’s premature hunger and the consequential sea of empty tables. She marches deliberately to the only occupied table, claiming seats next to a stranger, but she does recognize the two runners across from her.

Alia and her crew join them a few minutes later—Angel, bright and bubbling with a river of flashing platinum blonde hair, rushes to save their spots while her people shuffle through the food line. The tension from earlier melts away, giving out to mutual curiosity: June, dialing up the charm, pumps this new generation of agents for rumors and gossip, while they in turn ply her with questions about past missions, and, from a more informed agent, something more personal.

“Is it true you came from a Vault?”

“Ye-es,” June hedges, painfully aware of Shaun next to her, quiet but intently listening. They don’t talk much about anything before the lighthouse.

“My mom doesn’t like to talk about it,” the boy offers, matter-of-fact. “Trust me, I’ve asked.”

A laugh choruses around the table, and the conversation shifts.

And so it goes. After the first few days, Fixer’s novelty wears off and it’s not hard to settle into a new routine: schoolwork with Shaun, processing reports with Des, debriefing agents, being generally helpful. She never pictured herself being the HQ desk jockey type, but it’s a step in the right direction, toward being part of the family again.

—

A week later, Mercer sends an SOS, then goes dark.

HQ is eerily quiet following the announcement, but in the time it takes June to run to Des, a crowd forms around them.

“Mercer was mine. I have to—” her throat closes.

“I know,” Des says. Her cigarette lies forgotten in an ashtray; her empty hands twitch. “You’ll have help. Deacon?”

“Yeah,” he says from somewhere behind June. She hasn’t seen much of him since their last op—since their little fracas, if you could call it that. She didn’t even know he was still at HQ. She turns, but he isn’t looking at her.

“Take a few of the new kids,” Des is saying. “Show them why we still fight.”

Alia pushes to the center, flanked by her squadmates. “We’re coming,” she says.

Des nods. “Good. Get your gear and go. There’s not much time.”

Everything after is a blur. June pulls Shaun and Drummer Boy together and kisses each on the forehead, issuing instructions between assembling bits of armor and weaponry.

“When will you be back?” Shaun asks through a film of tears and a quivering chin, squeezing his mother’s hand. Drum stays quiet (he learned a long time ago not to ask that).

“I—later, bug. Drum will take care of you. I love you, get to bed on time, okay?”

And then they’re gone. The hours-long walk to Mercer shivers with tension, June too occupied with her own heavy dread to commiserate in the squad’s pre-battle jitters or to dwell on Deacon’s distance.

When they come upon the lake early in the evening, the boathouse shines, a beacon, a warning, flames mirrored orange and red in the still waters.

June makes a choked sound in her throat and breaks into a run, the other agents trailing behind her along the lake’s edge.

She barrels headlong into the first synth she sees—something crunches in her face, but that’s not important—and silver fluid gouts from the gash she tears in its throat. She doesn’t remember how the hunting knife got in her hand.

She wipes blood out of her mouth, ignores the gunfire distant behind her, and presses on toward the house. The body of a patroller falls to the ground in front of her—from the balcony, probably, shot down by her sniper, probably.

That’s when June notices her. An agent she doesn’t recognize lies crumpled on the porch steps, face raw and skin blackened from laser burns. June sucks in her breath, runs to her, lifts her limp hand.

“Hey.” Her voice is raw, cracked, broken as the girl’s face. “Hey, hey, hey.”

“Fixer?” Her one good eye flutters open, and her fingers twitch in June’s hands. “They knew… you’d come.”

June tries to sniff, but something’s blocking her nose. “Yeah. Had to keep my promise. You’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna—I’m gonna keep you safe.” She grips the hand tighter, smooths what’s left of the girl’s hair away from her face.

The girl’s laugh isn’t much more than a huff of labored breath. “Little late…”

Switchblade bends down into her field of vision. “Fixer, here.” He hands her a stimpak.

June gently twists the agent’s arm, looking for a vein to poke the needle into. It takes more than one stab—June’s not counting—before the needle takes and she can breathe again.

June stands. “Make sure she stays safe,” she tells Switchblade.

“I didn’t come to get put on babysitting duty,” he says, rising with her.

“I didn’t fucking ask. This is what a rescue mission looks like. Now you keep her safe while we look for other survivors or, so help me, I will make sure you never go on a field op again.”

Switchblade gives a curt nod. June turns to go inside.

The house is a wreck. Deacon, Chase, and Alia are already there, sifting through rubble to check for bodies.  

Deacon looks up when she enters. He shakes his head, the smallest left-right movement. She swallows back the thing trying to claw up her throat, climbs upstairs.

Caretaker is there, propped up against the safe they never could manage to move. He’s grotesque, half his face burned off, legs bent at odd angles, blood… everywhere. His chest is split open, like the autopsies she’d observe in the crime lab back Before. In his hand—June crouches down next to him—in his hand, his own heart, held loosely in his fingers.

The sob she’s been holding in bursts out. Deacon’s up the stairs moments later, but he stops dead in his tracks in the doorway.

“Oh, Christ,” he breathes. “Caretaker…”

June reaches to close the sightless eyes, then turns to look up at Deacon. “Synths didn’t do this,” she whispers, voice garbled by emotion and her broken nose. “Humans did.”

—

The group trudges back the way they came around the lake, heading home in grim silence. Alia and Switchblade carry the survivor between them, her arms draped around their shoulders, feet dragging.

June turns to look back at Mercer. The flames have spread from the shed to the main house, engulfing what's left of the refuge she swore to protect. It’s too much. Hand over her mouth, she crumples, bruised knees to the pebbly shore.

She hears Deacon, distant under the fire roaring in her ears: “Get her to HQ. We’ll catch up.”

He bumps into her shoulder (more to let her know he’s there, the detached part of her thinks, than out of any residual affection) as he sits, cross-legged. Close enough to touch, but he doesn’t.

“This is my fault,” she whispers.

He's quiet.

“This is the part where you lie to me,” she says, looking over at him, trying to find some humor. “Where’s my sweet nothings?”

“Blame the Institute.” Not a lie, not an admission of her guilt. Something in between. Something easier.

Her head is pounding, brain throbbing with her pulse. “How do you keep doing this? How do you not go insane with loss? Switchboard, Augusta, the Church… now Mercer. And how many more before? When does it end?”

She blots at her nose with her sleeve, leans forward to let accumulated blood and snot and tears dribble onto the sand.

He pulls her back by the shoulder. “C’mere, let me set that for you.”

June faces him and goes very still, eyes shut to avoid the too-firm set of his mouth and knotted jaw. He lines up his hands on either side of her nose, counts backward— “three, two—” and pulls her nose straight.

June grunts, stretches her jaw, and shakes more gunk out of her clearing nostrils. “Thanks.”

“Don't mention it.” He settles back and wipes his bloodied hands on his thighs.

June looks back at the funeral pyre for their friends. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Huh? Oh.” The firelight shines yellow and orange in his sunglasses. “Put it all in a box. Write a critically acclaimed stand-up comedy routine based on your trauma. Tour the bars of the Commonwealth, land a contract in New Vegas, forget your humble roots in your newfound fame. Fall into a hopeless spiral of addiction and debt, come crawling home with nothing to your name but an old joke about escape tunnels.”

June laughs without humor. “Mercer didn’t have one of those.”

“A goddamn shame.” He watches the fire with her for a while, then sighs. “Fixer—” She cuts him off with a violent shake of her head that leaves her dizzy.

“Not now, Deacon. Please.” There’s something heavy in his voice, and if he gives it to her right now, she thinks she’ll collapse from the weight of it.

But for the hitch in his breath, his shift is flawless. “I was just going to say we shouldn’t leave the kids unsupervised for so long.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She keeps staring at Mercer a moment longer. She doesn’t want to remember this, but the lead ball that pulls her heart to the base of her spine isn’t meant for anyone else.

—

Carrington had been prepared when they stumbled into the Bunker, an optimistic line of hospital cots made up in his clinic.

Only one is occupied.

“What’s her name?” June asks through the gauze stuffed up her nostrils. The girl’s stabilized, and clean white bandages cover most of her face and chest. An IV cocktail of painkiller, saline, and RadAway drips into her arm.

“Petra,” Carrington says. “She was one of our newest.”

“Is she…?”

Carrington hears the rest of her question. “She’ll live.” He turns to eye her. “Deacon did well with your nose.”

“He’s had some practice,” June says with a wry smile.

Carrington hums disapprovingly. “And how are you feeling? Does your head hurt?”

June shrugs. “I headbutted an armored synth.”

“Don’t dodge.”

“Fine, okay!” She waves a hand and looks away to avoid his penetrating gaze. “My head hurts like hell and there’s nothing I’d like more than to rip the IV from that poor girl’s arm and slip into a coma myself.”

“There’s the Fixer I know.” He walks to the radiator and pours two mugs of tea from a tired-looking kettle. He holds one out in her general direction without looking, and June presses her still-cold fingers around it. Then Carrington produces a flask from his coat pocket, gives himself a generous dip, and gestures to top off June. She pushes her mug under the flask gratefully.

“You always know just what I need,” she says, smile warming.

He pulls two spare, rickety chairs next to the heater and nods for her to sit. “Psychiatry isn’t precisely my field of expertise,” he says after a brief pause, sitting in his own chair and crossing a leg over his knee, “but we haven’t had much chance to talk since you came back.”

June winces. “Do I look that bad?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, you look like shit warmed over. And in my roles as both your physician,” he takes a deep, begrudging breath, “and your friend, it falls to me to… ensure your transition back into the Railroad’s ranks goes smoothly.”

“Doctor Carrington! I had no idea you felt that way about me.” She smiles, teasing, over the top of her mug. “I love you too, buddy.”

Carrington makes a soft noise of contempt. “Please, don’t make this more painful than it needs to be. I’m far from eager to get in the middle of whatever is going on between you and Deacon, but...”

“Oh, for the love of…” June scoffs. “Did Desdemona put you up to this?”

“She’s worried, Fixer. You’re a polarizing influence. We can’t afford—distractions, so to speak. Not when everything is in flux as it is.”

“It’s not getting in the way of our work. We’re professionals, Care.”

“We’re not _just_ professionals. Don’t do yourself and the Railroad the disservice of pretending otherwise.”

June takes a long drink of tea. “I know. We’ll figure it out. Christ, I forgot how nosey and in-each-other’s-business the Railroad is. Almost as bad as my in-laws were.”

“For better or worse,” Carrington says with a tired sigh, but June can hear the reluctant smile in his voice.

She looks back to the bed. “Any idea when we’ll be able to debrief her?”

Carrington shrugs. “I’ll alert you and Desdemona when she wakes. I wouldn’t expect much from her, though. She’ll likely still be in shock.”

At that moment, Des steps into the clinic’s doorway. “Fixer. There you are. Ready to debrief?”

“Yeah,” she says, standing and nodding goodbye to Carrington. “Is this a one-on-one, or are we getting the whole gang together?” She follows Des out to the hallway, and they lean against the wall together.

“I spoke with Alia and her team already.” Des brushes ash off her scarf. No mention of Deacon. “Skip the damage report and tell me what you think is happening here.”

“The Institute has outside help. What those bastards did—” she stops, clears her throat, takes a long drink from her mug. You’d think she’d be used to this by now, but the vision of Caretaker’s heart is there whenever she closes her eyes. “Synths aren’t programmed for that kind of torture, and the scientists don’t like getting their hands dirty. They have a new Kellogg or—or something.”

“I was afraid of that. Petra should be able to tell us more about the attack. Hopefully she’ll help shed some more light on the Institute’s mindset.” Des tilts her chin and frowns suddenly. “Where’s your boy? You’re usually attached at the hip.”

“Drum made him go to bed before we got in,” June says, putting the heel of her palm to her sandpaper eyes.

“You should get some rest, too. Petra isn’t going anywhere; we can check on her in the morning.”

“Rest” isn’t the word June would use to describe how she spends the rest of the night, hunched in the bunk above her son to keep her fitful, nightmarish sleep from disturbing him.

—

June crawls out of bed as early as is socially acceptable, stopping by the kitchen to beggar the largest mug Cookie can rustle up. She marches to the clinic with her empty vessel, gambling that last night’s kettle of tea will still be there. It is, and so is Des, her voice a low hum drifting from Petra’s bedside.

June toasts them with her tea and pulls up a seat next to Des.

“She’s been asking for you,” Des says in an undertone.

June tips her head in acknowledgement, then turns her smile to the girl. “Hi, Petra. I’m—”

“I know who you are, Fixer.” The girl’s voice is rough and unsteady, barely more than a harsh whisper. “They have a message for you.”

June and Des share a look. Petra coughs and continues in a monotone recitation: “Surrender yourself and the synth-child to the sovereign will of the Institute, or face the consequences.”

“Did they say what the consequences would be?” June doesn’t know if it’s an honest question or an ill-timed joke, but it’s too late to take back.

Petra glares at her with her remaining good eye. “Take a wild guess,” she sneers.

Des’s hand lands on June’s forearm and squeezes. “Fixer, a moment?” She stands and inclines her chin toward the door. Once they’re in their hallway conference room, she says, “I’d better finish this myself.”

June snorts. “Yeah, no shit.” She hates the catch in her voice. “See if she remembers what the mercenaries look like. Or if she knows who they are.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo.” Des quirks an eyebrow, and her fingers tap restlessly on the buttons of her vest. Carrington must have banned smoking in the clinic, or she’d have a cigarette to still her restless fingers. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” She clasps June’s arm briefly when she passes.

“Desdemona—”

She stops and turns in the doorway.

“I’m sorry.”

Des sighs. “This burden isn’t yours alone, Fixer. Don’t forget that.”

“Follow your own advice, Des,” June says with a slight, sad smile.

Torn between waiting for Des to finish talking with Petra and dragging her son out of bed to get breakfast, June hovers in the hallway long enough that Deacon passes her on his way to see the recovering agent.

“Des bench you?” He asks, barely glancing her direction. The tenuous bridge built by shared grief crumbles into the gulf between them.

“Yeah.” She hides her face in her mug of tea, and Deacon moves on without further questioning.

If Deacon’s going in, there’s no telling how long they’ll take, so June resigns herself to making herself busy instead of waiting it out.

There’s always something to do in the kitchen, and Cookie is the kind of solid, comfortable presence that doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t patronize. And when the radio comes to a song June likes, Cookie somehow knows, and turns the volume up, and puts aside the eggs she’s scrambling to pull June into a bright, swinging dance. It lasts just a few measures, then Cookie lets her go and takes up her spatula with nothing more than a wink and a knowing smile.

The knot in June’s gut loosens, just the littlest bit, and if the smile she returns is tremulous, at least it’s heartfelt.

—

The knot returns with a vengeance, solidifying into a brick and cementing at the bottom of her stomach, when Desdemona seeks her out an hour later. Cookie practically force-feeds the both of them, so Des fills her in between hasty, neat mouthfuls while they perch at the counter separating the kitchen from the mess’ dining area.

It’s not uncommon for the Railroad’s safehouses to suffer through the occasional Raider shootout, and every agent’s had their fair share of run-ins with synth patrols. But both at the same time, and coordinated—that’s new.

Petra couldn’t share much about the attack, between the shock and head trauma, and the narrative Des relays is clinical in its delivery. She lights a cigarette halfway through, eggs and toast forgotten. The Striders came first to jam Mercer’s radios, and the Raiders followed soon after, tearing through the agents to corral Mercer’s five escaped synths and return them to the Institute.

Petra only just remembers the woman who tortured her, painting a sparse picture of a pale, menacing woman in dilapidated blood-red power armor—beyond that, they don’t have much to go on.

June stacks their plates and returns them to Cookie with a word of thanks.

“Our tourists will turn up something,” Des says, stepping away from the counter. “This monster's MO makes it almost too easy to track her.” June doesn’t remember witnessing it (a small mercy), but the other murdered agents had been left with their hearts in their hands, same as Caretaker. June’s clenches painfully in her chest.

“And in the meantime?” She falls into step next to Des on their way to Central, unconsciously slowing her stride a hair to match the other woman’s shorter pace.

Des takes a long drag and regards June, calculating. “We chase other leads.”

Bastille, the agent monitoring radio comms this month, is waiting at Des’ station, fingers twisting in the brim of his hat in his hands. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” Desdemona says. “You were monitoring the radio when Mercer sent its SOS?”

He nods. He looks so, so young, his chin pocked with acne and his Adam’s apple bobbing large in his skinny neck. Then again, everyone looks young to June these days.

“And before.” Des keeps her voice light. A review, not an interrogation. “You were monitoring the Institute’s radio channels?”

He nods again. His eyes are wide.

“And you heard… nothing? Not a thing about the attack?”

He shakes his head. “No, ma’am.”

“Why is that, you think?”

“Dunno.” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “They’re jamming us, or they’re using channels we haven’t found yet…”

“Find out. I don’t like flying blind.”

“Yes, Des.” He wrings his hat even tighter, draws a shaky breath. “Des?”

She raises an eyebrow and smokes.

“I—I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Her face softens. “Not your fault, Bastille.” She presses her cigarette between her lips, freeing both hands to tug his distressed hat out of his grasp, straighten it out, and hand it back to him. “Ever forward,” she says, and pats his shoulder.

The boy’s chin trembles, and he pulls his hat low over his eyes, then darts off.

Des watches him leave with a heavy exhale of breath and smoke. “At some point, we’re going to need to have a memorial.”

—

The room presumably intended as the Bunker’s interfaith chapel in its previous life currently fulfills a new purpose as P.A.M.’s office, so they hold the service in Central, where a table against one wall overflows with flowers and lanterns and candles, photos and drawings and scraps of writing. The memorial takes up most of the wall now, extending back to Switchboard and before, tributes to those lost at Augusta and Ticon, Bunker Hill and the Church, to High Rise and Glory and—and Patriot. A diligently kept record of loss, and the congregation gathered today to add another entry.

There’s a fierce kind of joy in how the Railroad mourns. The grief is there, yes: loss and sorrow in spades. But more than that, there’s a deep, unshakable faith. Not in a god or higher power, but in their shared hope—their unshakeable certainty—that someday everyone, regardless of circumstances of birth, will have the chance to be free, and safe, and to live unafraid.

_Would you risk your life for your fellow man? Even if that man is a synth?_

“Caretaker, Jordan, Queenie—they all knew the risk,” Des says, eyes shining, a lantern held high in her hand. If ever there was an image for the Railroad to rally behind, June thinks, this is it. “They gave their lives defending our beliefs. They join the dozens of men and women before them who also paid the ultimate price. Our duty, we who are left behind, is to ensure their sacrifice does not go to waste. So we carry on.” She sets the lantern down among the scattered candles and flowers and steps away, letting the little crowd absorb her.

Shaun wraps his arms tight around June’s hips and tucks his face into her side, sniffling, so she curls an arm snug around him. The next eulogizer doesn’t step forward to share his piece, instead raising his voice from within the semicircle around the memorial. June doesn’t recognize the song—a post-war spiritual—but the cadence is achingly familiar and carries with it a vivid sense-memory.

_Desperate, heart-wrenching cries wake her for the third time in as many hours, and she feels the bed rise with the loss of her husband’s weight. He lifts Shaun, tiny and squalling, from the crib to cradle him in his arms. Nate’s warm baritone washes over her and the baby both, a wordless hum slow and soft in time with his rocking, and the baby quiets._

An arm winding around her shoulders pulls her out of her reverie, and Drummer Boy’s bowing his head to rest heavy on her shoulder. She leans into him, and she can feel the elegy he’s singing vibrate through her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters within a month??? An anomaly. Don't get your hopes up, good readers. But thanks for sticking around all the same. :)


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